


The Timeline Not Taken

by andacus



Series: What Happens in Bangkok Totally Doesn't Stay in Bangkok. [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Time Travel, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2020-10-18 01:46:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20631062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andacus/pseuds/andacus
Summary: Darcy Lewis is just trying to live her life, get to know her father, make it work with her active duty Avenger boyfriend, avoid disasters that always (just seriously always) seem to drop in her lap, and maybe sometimes sleep more than six hours at a time. So far it isn't going all that well. Especially now that the universe, in the form of her father-from-the-future, has dropped a time-bending, world-ending bomb in her lap. It is not a literal bomb.She's said this before and she will say it again - the universe is one twisted bitch.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I did a thing. It's not finished (and not totally even plotted out) and I'm honestly not sure how much time I have to work on this (I'm also trying to write a master's thesis), but it won't leave me alone. It is in the Bangkok Universe so if you haven't read those, you really should. Anyway, thanks for reading! I'll add tags as I go, mostly because I'm still figuring out which tags to use.

Here’s the thing… Darcy knows she’s living in an alternate dimension. Not in the sense that she’s living in a dimension not her own. Not in the sense that she’s been displaced. Moreso in the sense that she’s living in one of the millions (trillions?) of dimensions all somewhat resembling one another. She knows this because her father told her so and her father has never lied to her.

She’s sitting on her couch in her little apartment in Avengers Tower, decompressing from an averagely frustrating day (because every day is some measure of frustrating lately) when he appears. He materializes in the space between blinks - suddenly and loudly, because Tony. 

“Tony! What the fuck?” She says, jumping to her feet and almost spilling her beer.

“Hi,” is all he says.

He looks old.

Darcy stares at him. She just left him less than an hour ago, still obsessing in the shop over whatever it was he was obsessing over (she tries not to get too involved in his projects on account of then she has to help with said projects), but now she stares at him as he stands in the middle of her living room, surprised and confused, and he looks… older.

“How in the hell…?” She asks.

“Umm… time stone,” he says with a shrug, wiggling his right hand. Why is he wiggling his hand?

Darcy does not respond, but whatever look she does manage causes him to smirk and then break out into a short burst of laughter. “Jesus, I missed you,” he says after a minute.

And then he’s hugging her, which is odd because they don’t really do physical affection. But he won’t let go and he’s kind of sweaty and she’s very confused so she pries him off of her and gives him a long look. A very long look.

It takes some resolve and some serious mental gymnastics (thank god for being a Stark, she thinks), but finally Darcy says, “What year are you from?”

Tony smirks. “Chip off the old block.”

Darcy scowls. “Dad,” she says without patience, expectant.

“I missed that,” he says sadly. “That petulant tone. That part of you that is so me.”

She hadn’t been scared or worried or anything other than surprised before, but this comment throws her. He doesn’t do this, doesn’t compare himself to her, doesn’t talk about their similarities or differences - they don’t need commenting on, they just are. Plus, Tony's an emotional cripple in, just, so many ways, so talking about their feelings is, like, completely not something that they do. So she takes it as a giant red flag, which it clearly is.

“What’s wrong?” She asks and he ignores her.

“Look, Darce, I’ve got a hell of a situation. I need you to do some shit you really shouldn’t have to do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll show you.”

Tony meets her eyes, his brown and her blue, different eyes, but the same determined jaw, the same stubborn chin, the same focused mind. And in an instant, they've transported away, through a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds and what is that smell? Things pass in front of her vision, scenes, and images and all manner of confusion far too fast to really understand, and yet she does. She knows it all like she's the one who experienced it, like these are her own memories, her own feelings. She feels like her head is going to explode and her stomach lurches and then just as suddenly as it started, it stops.

It was a fraction of a moment in time, a tiny instant of nothing and everything. And Darcy is suddenly very different from the woman she was before it happened.

She’s clutching at her father, tears running down her face, her mind reeling, her emotions a tornado inside her. What the fuck did he just show her? What the hell happened? No… what the hell was going to happen? She wants to ask but doesn’t know how, doesn’t even really know how to breathe or stand or let go of him. 

“I know,” he says, one hand strong against her back and the other stroking her hair. “I know. It’s a lot.”

He guides her to the couch and they sit. Silence settles over them for a long while and it’s comfortable, comforting. Finally, when she’s had the ability to process what he’s shown her, Darcy pulls slightly away, just enough to look at him, not enough to stop their shoulders from pressing together. She isn’t ready to let go yet.

“I died,” She says. 

Tony nods. “Yes. You and billions of other people, beings, life forms. Half the universe.”

Darcy takes that in, holds her breath a moment, lets it out. “Fuck.”

“Pretty much. But we brought you back! We fixed it.”

She levels him with a long, sad look. “But…”

Tony slumps a little. “But this is the end of the line for me. There’s only one way to make sure it stays fixed. And I have to die to do it.”

“I know.”

They sit in a mournful silence for a few more moments, neither sure exactly how to proceed with this conversation or how to express what that means. 

“But,” Tony says a little more cheerfully. “You can fix it in this timeline, Darce. It doesn’t have to be this way. At least not here. We deserve a happy ending in at least one dimension.”

“How?”

“You know everything that happens. I’ve just shown you Thanos and his plan and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ugly underbelly, and the epic Avengers break up…. You can prevent it.” He shifts uncomfortably for a minute like he’s unsure how to proceed before finally continuing. “There’s a small catch. You’ll have to find Loki.”

“Loki?”

“He’s the best chance we have of getting ahead of this. Unfortunately.”

“Great,” Darcy says clearly not thinking it is great at all. "If you're considering that a _small_ catch...."

“Believe you me, I don’t want you anywhere near that nutjob, but you’re going to need him. And Gamora, but she’s somewhere out in the galaxy and Loki is here.”

“Here?!” 

“Not here here as in, in the tower here, but he is on Earth.”

Well, that was news.

“And he can get me to Gamora?”

“Yes. You’ll need everyone, of course, and definitely Carol Danvers, but again… not here and hard to find. Unless you ask Fury, but that's kind of not an option since there is zero way to explain how you know who that is and Eyepatch does not need to know any of this. He makes literally nothing better.”

“Dad…”

“Look, Darce, I hate this," he grumbles, looking more heart-broken than she's ever seen. "I hate that I have to ask this of you, but I need you to have a happy ending. I need to be sure I can - at the very least - try and make that happen." He pauses and puts on a flippant expression that she's seen a hundred times before and knows is just another form of armor, just another one of Iron Man's masks. "And if a family is going to have a monopoly on saving the universe from Thanos it had damn well better be the Starks.”

Darcy laughs, still a little watery from her very emotional trip through space-time/reality, but it’s a genuine laugh. “Family motto: Never lose at Monopoly, right?”

“Somewhere Howard is very proud. Look, Darcy, I can’t keep that moment frozen in time forever. It’s starting to slip. I have to get back to my glory moment.” He stands from the couch and she follows, grabbing onto his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, drawing her into a hug. “You're the first best thing that ever happened to me. I love you.”

“I love you,” she says, squeezing him a little tighter.

And then he’s gone. Just as quickly as he appeared, Tony disappears, leaving her alone in her apartment.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay. It's been a crazy few months. Thanks for your patience. And please bear with me, as I will finish it, but it won't be very fast.

Darcy wakes up the next morning with puffy eyes and blotchy skin. The price for crying herself to sleep and then waking up to cry some more. It isn’t every day your father shows up from the future, tells you that half the universe dies (yourself included), that you can prevent it, and that he’s about to sacrifice himself to stop it from happening again. It’s been a busy twelve hours.

She wishes Clint were home, but he’s not due back from wherever the hell SHIELD has sent him until later today. 

And isn’t that just the god damn pits? Hydra and SHIELD and THEY ARE THE SAME FUCKING THING! How the hell is she supposed to deal with that? What is she supposed to tell Clint? And Cap?

THE SAME FUCKING THING THOUGH!

Fuck.

And speaking of Clint (and this is totally not dire, but still, definitely something she can’t reconcile), in other Tony’s (OtherTony? OT? OthTon?) timeline, Clint is still married to Laura and they have, like, nine kids. Okay, three, but still. Why? What changed in this timeline to break them up so early in their marriage? In that timeline, Darcy still learns Tony’s her father, but she never dates Clint on account of he's married, she never even goes to work for Coulson. Best she can tell, that other Tony might think Coulson is still dead. And Thor takes Loki back to Asgard after the attack on New York; he never escapes with the Tesseract, as he did in this timeline. 

Wait, no. She can’t obsess over the things that are different. At least not yet. It’s a separate space and time dimension. Surely there are millions of timelines where she never even meets Tony, never goes to New Mexico on a doomed/awesome science adventure, never does half the things she’s done. She can’t let herself get caught up in what is and is not the same in her own here-and-now. She’s in this particular dimension and she has to save it from Thanos. What did Tony say? They deserve at least one timeline where they get happy endings. She’s inclined to agree and, for whatever reason, this is the timeline that has the most potential for success, otherwise Tony never would have chosen it. If she knows anything, it’s how her father’s science brain works. The other parts of his brain are a mystery to all, but the science part, that she knows. And she _knows_ he would have chosen the timeline most likely to succeed. 

Okay, she can do this. But what the fuck is she going to do about Hydra?

Also, she apparently has to find Loki without making anyone suspicious. And avoid the whole Ultron debacle, but she’s pretty sure that one will be a relatively easy bit of timeline altering. If her understanding of the timeline from other Tony’s timeline is correct, this timeline’s timeline is different.

Ouch, her brain hurts.

OtherTony’s timeline is a few years off from her own with some huge, very big, reality-altering differences. Avengers Tower never quite became the college dorm that she knows and loves, so there’s already a family element that OtherTony didn’t have. She can use this to her advantage. 

But still… Hydra. She’s said it before and she will say it again: FUCK.

***

When she’s showered and dressed and pretty sure that she can face other people (ie Tony), Darcy manages to slowly make her way to work. It’s the longest three-minute walk of her life.

She texts Clint in the elevator, telling him she’ll see him for dinner and asking if he can pick up some tequila. His reply is all emojis, something he’s been doing lately with the express intent of annoying her, but whatever he means by a cocktail, a big red exclamation point, a rocket, and a skull and crossbones, she isn’t even going to try and decipher. She’s going to have to tell him about recent universe bending events, but she really doesn’t want to. Trying to (1) make Clint and Loki get along and (2) either lie to him or clue him into the whole Hydra secretly runs SHIELD business does not sound like happy fun times. And if she’s being super honest with herself, which she absolutely is not because obvious defense mechanism shit, she’s a little pissed at her dad for putting her in this situation. And would you look at that? She’s moving through the stages of grief rather quickly if she does say so herself. 

The shop is empty when she gets there, something that she is eternally grateful for at that moment. After the accidental sex tape fiasco, she managed to convince Tony to let her have a private server that JARVIS doesn’t monitor (and no JARVIS surveillance in her apartment unless she requests it, which benefits everyone). Granted, JARVIS has access to all of it through emergency protocols, but barring emergencies it’s safe from (her) Big Brother is the point. Which is good, since she’s about to start doing some very weird, very illegal shit.

“What are you doing that’s weird and illegal?” Tony asks, striding into the room.

She has got to stop talking to herself. 

It takes a moment to reconcile what happened last night and the worn, sad, determined Tony with this version. Current Tony (her Tony) is just as confidant, snarky, and impossible as he always is, but her vision gets a little misty as she thinks of all of the horrors he might have to endure. She doesn’t want what happened to the other version of him to happen to her version. A determination unlike any she’s felt before comes over her and Darcy knows in that moment that she will succeed or she will die trying. 

Snapping herself out of her reverie, she quickly picks up the banter, lest he catches on that something is wrong. “Nothing weirder or more illegal than anything you’ve done,” Darcy replies, smiling at him when he drops a hefty mug of coffee on her desk. 

“Probably true. Still, these are things you should tell your landlord in case the cops show up and since I’m your landlord…”

“Can you be my landlord if I don’t pay rent? Because that is definitely not something that I do.”

“Yes. Definitively. Also, you should tell parents these things so we can be prepared to either bail you out of jail or let you sit there and learn a lesson. That’s a Howard Stark original, by the way.”

Darcy snorts around her coffee mug. “How many times did he leave you to rot?”

Tony, who has made his way to his desk and pulled up a schematic of some such thing by this point, pauses to think. “Not that often. Twice? My mother wasn’t fond of that particular bit of fatherly wisdom.”

“It is still unclear whether that was a good or a bad thing,” she says, turning to her own work and letting it distract her. 

She’s emotionally raw and this easy conversation with Tony is somehow both a balm and a burn. It’s nice and normal and comforting to exist with him in this way, in a way that they have built for themselves, but the weight of what OtherTony has told her is hanging heavily on her interactions with him. She wants to hug him, to tell him that he’s the best thing that ever happened to her, to give him as much love as she can, but she can’t do that. He isn’t even the same Tony. And besides, she’s going to prevent the whole thing anyway. 

Step one, she has decided, is to take care of the Hydra issue, which she realized as she chatted with Tony, also mitigates the Ultron issue. If she spills the beans on Hydra now, she can point the non-Hydra agents toward Strucker’s research in Sokovia. No Sokovia, no need for Ultron. 

She spends well over half of her day breaking into the SHIELD servers, finding the information that she needs, and compiling it into a comprehensive report. After that, it’s relatively simple. She sends the first email to Steve and Nat, knowing that they will see it immediately and react in the expected fashion (shock, outrage, efficiency, violence). The second email goes to Fury, but she gives Steve and Nat a solid three-hour head start because she is nice like that. She does not tip Clint off. She hopes he will forgive her someday.

***

When she gets home (about 5 minutes after she tips off Fury), Darcy paces her apartment, anxious and uncertain. Clint comes home only a few minutes later, looking suspicious but with the requested booze. She greets him by the door, genuinely happy that he’s back, pecks him on the mouth, and takes the bottle.

“The last time we shared a bottle of tequila you told me Tony is your dad,” Clint says, following her into the kitchen and sitting in his usual chair at the table. “What’s up?”

“No, you drank tequila and wouldn’t share it with me.” Darcy corrects him, pulling some glasses down from the cabinet. “I drank whiskey.”

“Semantics,” he says, waving her argument off. “Seriously, what’s up?”

“Crazy fucking shit, Clint. Crazy fucking shit. With world-ending implications and god damn aliens. Again!”

To say that Clint instantly believes her when she’s done explaining is an overstatement. He is skeptical, which is well within the normal reaction one might expect. She isn’t even sure he should believe her. She wouldn’t believe her. But Clint is a very good boyfriend and a very good superhero and he will help her, as she knew he would. He might think she’s got brain slugs or been dosed with some weird serum while he’s doing it, but Darcy is sure that he’ll be convinced sooner rather than later that she’s telling the truth. Especially since she saves the whole “I just sent evidence to Nat, Cap, and Fury that SHIELD is being run by evil Nazis” part of the story for the end.

Nat’s reply text of, _fucking Starks and their fucking shit. Tell whichever one did this thank you_ to Clint’s request for proof seems to be evidence enough. He is however deeply unhappy that she did not include him in that part of the espionage.

“I need you here,” Darcy says. “I need your help. I can’t do this alone.”

He seems to forgive her after that.

Clint is, understandably, very uneasy about the Loki part and immediately wants to clue Thor into the deal. Darcy is uncertain about that plan, knowing that the more people who know, the more likely it all spirals out of control.

“Look, my dad came to me with this for a reason. I’m not totally sure why yet, but there must be one. I think. And I really don’t want to spin everyone up and raise all of the superhero hackles unless we know more.”

Clint scowls. 

“Don’t scowl at me,” Darcy scolds. “You know how they can get. And this isn’t even including the whole SHIELD bologna they’re dealing with! One little whiff of the _half the world is going to die_ shit and Steve will be practically shooting righteous indignation and humanity-saving-feels out of his eyeballs. And then what happens? Don’t answer that… it’s a rhetorical question because I know what happens. Steve and Tony get into it about the right approach, you and Nat tell Fury, Maria tries to mitigate and gets nowhere so instead she hatches a plan to undermine and/or save everyone, Thor runs off in search of his brother and also space stuff, and we do not accomplish any research or subterfuge at all.”

Clint sighs. She’s right. But he is, too.

“But,” Darcy concedes. “We do need to tap Thor into the ring. Just… not yet. Let’s just get more information first.”

Clint accepts this and while still very skeptical about the whole story, understands that at least one part of it is a clear and present danger - Loki.

“So, Loki is hiding out on Earth?” He says, rifling through the massive collection of notes that she’s made. 

“But we aren’t sure where exactly,” she says, nodding.

“I say we start with him. You know, now that other people are managing the whole government Nazis thing.”

“Don’t be bitter,” she says. “You’re helping with the other parts. The humanity saving parts!”

Clint crosses his arms and glares.

“So… Loki,” Darcy says. “It was Thanos that sent him here for the Tesseract in the first place, right?”

Clint nods, accepting her change of subject. “That’s what he said, at least.”

“And he did get the Tesseract in the end.” She adds, grabbing a page from her notes. “Which is why I think Tony pointed us toward him.”

Clint scrunches and then raises his eyebrows, as her meaning sinks in. “You think he’s intentionally not taking the Tesseract to Thanos?”

“I do, yes. Because he’s Loki and having an infinity stone makes him very, very powerful. Remember that Thor said Loki wanted to rule Asgard, that he was jealous of his brother’s position as heir? An infinity stone would give him an advantage over his father and his brother.”

“Okay,” Clint concedes. “That may be true, but how does that help us?”

“Well, he clearly isn’t invested in Thanos’s plan. He doesn’t want Thanos to get the stone, whether that’s for his own gain or not, we also do not want Thanos to get the stone. We can use him - his enemy is our enemy.” 

After a long silence, Clint nods. “Fine. We find Loki and we use him to get rid of Thanos.”

“Yep! And then we save the god damn world!”

There we go! Optimism and determination, two things Darcy knows she can do. She’s got this. 

Clint does not look pleased.

Now, where the fuck does one find the god of mischief? 

***

The god of mischief, it turns out, is not that hard to find. What a disappointment. Honestly, she thought she would be searching for months and, like, asking Thor for help. But no. He was right there the whole fucking time.

“You were right here the whole fucking time?” She asks, still not super good that whole self-censoring nonsense. 

“Excuse you.” He says, his narrow nose scrunched up in distaste. In person, he really does look every inch the regal asshole.

Darcy had not really found Loki on purpose. Yes, she was looking for him, but she’d only spent, like, seven hours on it. The thing is, SHIELD and Thor have tossed a bunch of resources at the hunt for Loki, but no one really thinks he’s still on Earth, so they’re not really looking at the data that comes back. All Darcy had to do was scrub it and sort it. Then again, maybe Hydra doesn’t want to find Loki. Maybe Hydra was working with Loki … shit, she’s going to be re-thinking everything for maybe ever.

It was dumb luck (and proximity to her own physical location) that had her knocking on the right door so early in her search. Several locations came back as likely places to find him and being the efficient investigator that she obviously is, Darcy started with the closest. Like, why start in Dubai when she can pop nine blocks over?

When the universe isn’t kicking her in the ass, it does sometimes hand her the best favors. 

Darcy scoffs. “Thor is going to be so pissed,” she says happily. 

Loki simply glares at her.

“I am so excited to tell him!” She does a little happy dance and giggles.

Now it is Loki’s turn to scoff. “You’ll do no such thing.”

“And what?” Darcy asks, eyeballing the predicament he’s in. “You’ll stop me?” 

Loki does not respond. Instead, he takes three deliberate steps forward, stopping well inside her personal space. He is very tall and far too close to her. It is no doubt intimidating, she’s certainly intimidated, but she also knows he’s found himself in quite the pickle and that is distinctly to her advantage. 

In a moment of very Stark-like reckless abandon, Darcy reaches up and taps the metal cuff around his right wrist with one fingernail. It makes a satisfying clicking sound. “How, exactly, are you getting around this?”

In one quick motion, Loki grabs her wrist and twists it awkwardly away from her body. She tries to pull away, but he’s so, so much stronger than she is. 

“I can still beat you to death,” he snarls.

Darcy pulls her arm back, trying to get away from him, but he holds fast. Pain shoots up her arm and several things happen all at once. She yelps, wincing at the sharp twinge that runs from her shoulder to her wrist, Loki’s face twists in some odd mixture of anger and pain, and he drops her arm with a low, dangerous sounding hiss. 

“Huh,” Darcy says, rubbing her wrist. Turning on her heel from where Loki is standing (he whips away from her, all drama and self-righteous anger), Darcy crosses the room toward the woman in the impressively stylish robe. She’s not sure what kind of look it is exactly, but it’s a good one. Very flattering, very cosplay, reminds her of something that she just can’t quite put her finger on.

“So,” Darcy says, “You weren’t kidding, he feels whatever pain he inflicts.”

The woman nods.

“And he’s confined to this house?”

The woman nods again. “Yes. He is also unable to perform magic. The cuff on his wrist prevents both the use of magic and violence.”

“Ooh, a twofer,” Darcy says, impressed. 

The woman smiles just slightly. “You may seek him out whenever you like if it helps you on your mission. And I am available to you in any way that you may need. You have only to ask.”

Darcy does a decent job of keeping her face blank (she’s been practicing), but this is definitely an unexpected statement. The woman is staring at her and it is unnerving. Her expression is not unkind at all, in fact, it is sort of gentle and sincere. But Darcy doesn’t know this woman, doesn’t know what her intentions are or what she knows of Darcy’s mission, doesn’t know her name or how the fucking hell she trapped and disarmed Loki at all. But the woman has declined to answer on all points and something in Darcy’s gut tells her not to push too hard at those buttons. 

She turns back to the man doing an impressive impression of an angsty goth teen in the corner and smiles. “See you later!”

He looks horrified and she can’t help the smile that spreads across her face. This whole situation is terrible, truly, but poking at Loki isn’t without its charm. She’ll take whatever perks she can get.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Obviously things are a little tense. I hope you are all okay and doing well. I had some time this week to catch up on this so I hope this chapter finds you well and interested in a little fanfic distraction. If you want to chat or vent or whatever, I will do my best to be present in the comments. Also, I'm several drinks in at the moment so I'm flying in the face of the old addage and instead of writing drunk and editing sober, I am editing drunk and posting drunk (which I just learned right now was never said by Hemmingway and I am honestly shook). Anyway, happy reading, I'm in California and on lock-down, so my house is now following vacation rules and I drink all day. Yay!

Darcy walks unsteadily down the steps of the brownstone, rushes around the first corner she comes to, drops to the ground in a heap, and has a mid-sized panic attack. What the hell was she doing? Mouthing off to the god of mischief! The man who killed hundreds of people in an attempt to take over the planet! The actual planet; the whole thing. Why does she do this? It’s a goddamn Stark thing, she’s sure of it; some weird genetic mutation. One hint of adrenaline and fear and they mutate into mouthy, defiant, smart-asses with absolutely (ABSOLUTELY) no sense of self-preservation. It is not a good mutant superpower at all. And the very worst part? _She doesn’t even really recognize it’s happening until after it’s over. _

With her back to the stone wall of whatever building she’s fallen against, Darcy sucks in shallow breath after shallow breath, her heart beating so fast she’s scared it will explode. Her entire mind is a kaleidoscope of panic and blind fear. Clear, coherent thoughts are fleeting and whipsy, she struggles to grasp them, but it’s just fear and self-beratement that seems to permeate everything.

What an idiot! She’s forever berating Tony for doing stupid shit exactly like this and now she’s following in his -

“Miss Lewis,” a voice says from above her crouched position, interrupting her frantic thoughts.

Her head jerks up before she can register what she’s doing or who is talking. It’s a man in some sort of cape… wait, she should know him. She knows who he is, except she’s scrambling for breath and thoughts are cycling in her mind about her own idiocy and Loki’s cold green eyes and she can’t get out of it.

Darcy scrambles backward, her desperate breaths coming even faster, her vision starting to blur.

“I won’t hurt you,” he says calmly, hands held outward in a gesture of peace. “Take deep breaths. Slowly.”

“What?” is all she can manage. She slumps against the building, exhausted. Anxiety and a sense of the deepest dread settle in her chest.

The man approaches slowly, calmly. He crouches in front of her. “Darcy, I’m Dr. Stephen Strange. I’m trying to help you. Take a breath with me, okay?” 

Darcy meets his eyes and because she has no other choice, she draws in a deep breath, matching his steady pace, inhale… exhale…inhale...exhale… again and again, until she’s calmed herself and her head clears.

“Am I crazy?” She asks.

Strange huffs what might be some approximation of a laugh. “No.”

“Good,” Darcy replies. They continue to breathe together for a long while. She isn’t sure how much time has passed, but gradually she begins to feel calmer, lighter, less scared/angry/anxious/sad/all of the things.

Finally, when she’s almost steady, Darcy asks, “Why are you here?”

Strange extends a hand and helps her up from her crumpled position on the sidewalk. 

“You okay?” An older lady calls from across the street, eyeing Strange strangely (ha!). 

“Yeah,” Darcy yells back a little weakly, shaking a thumb in Strange’s direction. “My dad likes comic books.”

Strange scowls at her, but says nothing.

“Dude, you wear a cape,” she says.

“It’s a cloak.”

“Look,” Darcy redirects, “ if you’re here, something is wrong. I did something wrong, right?”

He nods. “And I’m going to send you back to the moment you made the wrong choice. I can’t do it again… probably. I’m not really supposed to even be here, but when Tony used the stone to set you on this journey, it created a huge ripple, which I’ve been monitoring. My interference too often will interrupt the optimal outcome.”

Darcy scrunched her eyebrows. “So… you helping ends in bad things?” 

“Pretty much.” Strange shrugs. “For various reasons, using the time stone to help you here, in this timeline, doesn’t go well. I’ve looked at several timelines wherein I use the stone to alter your path and they all end in exactly what you do not want to happen. However, this one change does not seem to have an effect.”

Darcy stares at him for a minute and succinctly states: “Okay, so you can help me this once?”

“Right. Remember, I’m sending you right back to where you went wrong so do the opposite of what you did last time.”

Darcy opens her mouth to ask… about eighty questions, but finds herself suddenly, jarringly, no longer on the street. She was standing on a street corner but is now at her workstation in the tower, finger hovering over the backspace key on her keyboard. She’s sending the email that alerts Nat and Cap to the Hydra parasite living in SHIELD… and she’s about to delete Clint off of the email.

Initially, when she’d put this plan together, it was going to be the Clint, Nat, Cap show, but she had changed her mind the first time around. She had changed her mind because she thought she needed Clint to help her with the rest of it. Apparently that was the wrong decision. 

Tony walks by and drops another mug of coffee on her desk and wanders back over to his project. She stares after him thoughtfully. 

Okay, either she was supposed to copy Clint on the email or she wasn’t supposed to have the second cup of coffee.

She’s pretty sure it’s the email. Pretty sure.

Instead of deleting Clint’s name off the address bar, Darcy hits send and prays to whoever is listening that she is making the right choice.

***

She makes her way home after a few hours of wrangling Tony’s impressively energetic mood (and writing the wrong date on basically everything, because she’s just hopped backward an entire day) and texts Clint that he should bring home tequila because that’s what she did last time, even though this time she knows he’s up to his eyeballs in espionage and violence. 

_I suspect you know I won’t be home for a while._

_Whatever do you mean?_

_I love you._

_Be safe. ILU_

She drops her phone on the couch and heads to the kitchen to find whatever booze she has.

***

Darcy wakes up that night in a cold sweat. The hazy light filtering in through the windows tells her that it is somewhere around midnight. New York is never dark, not really, it’s just various shades of neon and LED lit depending on the time of day. Darcy has gotten quite familiar with the shifting levels of light pollution as they drift upward toward her apartment. Avengers Tower, of course, sits guard above the rest of the city, a silent sentry. She’s feeling that metaphor pretty heavily just now. 

Her dream had been hectic, violent, a flashing kaleidoscope of someone else’s memories. She’s not exactly eager to go back to sleep. 

Her kitchen is a mess and Darcy is awake at… oh, it’s 3am. Neat.

By 7am Darcy is a messy ball of anxiety with a clean apartment. She’s exhausted and crawls back into bed to pass out for a while. 

Tony wakes her up a handful of hours later. Not actually Tony, because he’s always living about ten years in the future and has weird issues about physicality, but Tony’s voice booms through her room, jarring her awake. She can’t quite bring herself to be mad.

At her father’s request, Darcy stumbles into the lab to look at the cool thing he’s come up with, which is of course she _oohs_ and _ahs_ at, but her mind is elsewhere.

Darcy makes her excuses, claims she’s coming down with a flu bug and makes a beeline out of the lab.

Next stop, a nondescript brownstone in the UES with a murderous Nordic god inside. 

***

“Oh, you’re back,” Loki says, smirking. 

Wait… “What?”

Loki rolls his eyes. “You’ve returned,” he says very slowly, as though she is exteremely stupid. 

“Don’t pester the girl,” says the mystery Lady (capital L, because Darcy is pretty sure this woman is an actual Lady of some type).

Loki just shrugs like he couldn’t care less and crosses his arms, keeping his eyes on her.

“You know I was here before?”

But before Loki answers her phone buzzes and she instinctively looks at it. It’s from Clint.   
_FYI the scepter was stolen from the Hydra-shield-Nazis several months ago. Not before they did some really fucked up human experimentation, but I’ll fill you in on that later. Thought maybe you and Tony and Thor could use that information._

“Fuck,” Darcy mutters to herself, noting Loki’s amused expression. 

And then the other shoe drops.

“Fuck!” She says, but this time it’s triumphant. “You have two stones.”

Loki’s amused grin slips.

“Ha! You do. You have the stone from the scepter, too.” Darcy begins to pace, hands gesturing a little wildly. “I mean, I knew you had the Tesseract and that you didn’t take it back to Thanos, obviously. I assumed you just wanted it to get the throne on Asgard, which I’m sure you do, because that defeat Earth by uniting its heros plan was… honestly, beneath you. But it’s bigger than that. You know Thanos wants to murder half of the universe and you are not a fan of this plan.” She pauses to align her thoughts a bit before pressing on. “Doesn’t matter why, you’re clearly not. Otherwise you would have taken the Tesseract to him. Instead you’re hiding on Earth, locked up, magic bound, with two stones… and that’s by choice isn’t it?”

“You are unwell,” he says matter of factly, dismissively.

“Probably. But you have two stones. I know you do. Access to two infinity stones makes you more than capable of escaping this place, doesn’t it? If not, I will be very disappointed in the entire idea of infinity stones.”

The woman, who has been standing silently in the corner, scoffs. It is a sound of equal disappointment and resignation. Maybe a little amusement. “Loki,” she says.

Loki does not comment, but the look on his face says several frightening things.

“You can hate me all you want,” Darcy says. “But we need each other. So stop trying to kill me with your eyeballs.”

“My hands, then?” He flares his nostrils and his fists clench.

Darcy backs up just a few steps.

“Okay, look,” she says in a more appeasing tone. “Can we agree that no one in this room wants Thanos to get his way?”

“Certainly,” the woman says. 

Loki simply nods his chin a fraction of an inch in agreement.

“Then we need to work together to stop him.”

There is silence for several seconds and Loki finally says, “Well, obviously.”

“You’re rude,” is all Darcy can say to that.

Loki looks proud.


End file.
